Welcome to Valhalla: Inside the New 250GB Xbox 360 Slim
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 18, 2010 1:59 AM ESTLifting The Covers
On the old 360 you at least had a removable face plate and some insight into what was going on at the rear of the system. This time around you can only look in at the sides which makes this next part quite frustrating.
Thankfully I know exactly how many clips you have to break free: three on the back and eight on the front.
I started on the back, got the clips loose then moved to the front. You need to access clips at both the left and ride side of the Xbox 360. A flashlight can be very handy here. Remember you’ve got clips at both the top and the bottom of the Xbox to work free at the front. Unfortunately during the process I managed to snap a few of these clips, not to the point where the system couldn’t be put back together thankfully.
The only advice I can give you here is to be patient, persistent and have a good flathead screwdriver at your side. Once you’ve pried these clips free the front will separate from the rest of the system. If you’re trying to do it without breaking any clips, good luck, if you don’t mind then be prepared to put some force into the process.
Be careful when removing the front of the system. There’s a ribbon cable that connects the 360‘s power button to the rest of the system, you have to remove it before you can proceed. In my original teardown the ribbon cable just ripped right out of its connector without any problems so if this happens to you, you should be ok.
The ribbon connector attaches here
With the front removed, separate the clips on the back and the top cover of the 360’s should lift right off exposing what we have below:
From this point on you’ll need your T8 bit. Start by removing the two screws that hold the front panel PCB in place. With the screws removed the PCB pulls straight out:
Now look at the side of the Xbox with the white sticker on it, there are 12 x T8 screws that you need to remove here to take the whole thing apart. If you just want to get the cover off I believe you only need to remove the 5 black ones.
The 12th screw is actually hidden under the white Xbox 360 sticker. It looks like Microsoft has done a lot to figure out whether or not you’ve opened this thing. Modders don’t make Microsoft happy. RRoD didn’t make me happy. Modders ftw.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
109 Comments
View All Comments
HellcatM - Saturday, June 19, 2010 - link
I guess MS is using different DVD drives because this article says its using a Lite-on, while the one from the link below says it uses a Panasonic. Both are good drives from good companies.http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/06/17/someone-has-a...
Ganesh_balan - Sunday, June 20, 2010 - link
So I happened to read somewhere that although MS says the console cannot RROD it can RDOD and seems like a home user actually faced the wrath. His console was asked to shut down. :DTake that MS!
kratos4u - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
xbox 360s slim = "no RROD" its RDOD (red dot of death ) this time . 299$ worthless . xbox 360 sales high reason pirated games.sorry xbox 360 fanboys
PS3 godz console
bill4 - Wednesday, June 23, 2010 - link
i owned a PS3, it's remarkably poorly engineered. Terrible console, terrible controller, terrible games, terrible graphics. Even the much vaunted Uncharted actually looks pretty janky.TreDawg - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
Does the new 360 still use a 100mbit ethernet port? I was really hoping for them to make the move to gigabit.TheLaw5 - Thursday, June 24, 2010 - link
There's no real point to having Gig networking on a 360. It all reality, it would just be more expenditures and costs for them to put a Gigabit chip on board. That 2.5inch drive isn't going to be making any impressive read/writes. And 10/100mbps Ethernet does a fine job at HD streaming and for Xbox Live...so you know...Yes, it would be nice, but no need.
But to answer your question, I don't know if it has 1000mbps Ethernet, but I highly doubt it.
tipoo - Sunday, December 5, 2010 - link
Why would you ever need gigabit ethernet in the 360? Streaming 1080p content is still far far away from saturating a 100Mbit connection, and even file transfers would get bottlenecked elsewhere.victor2585222 - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
Umm I wanna buy this new 360 because my old one broke but if I buy the new 360 I would waste my hard drive 80$ Wifi 100$ and a second pair controllers 60$ and my harddrive has all my games in it losing all my achivamants so should I get this new 360 or buy a regular one? If you chose one plz tell me a reason why?Diddy Dave - Thursday, July 1, 2010 - link
Great piece on taking the new XBox apart.I see you show the wi-fi card being removed, which is great. Have you tried to play on it without the wi-fi card plugged in?
I ask because myself and a number of friends get ill from being near wi-fi, and my current 360 is starting to have problems. As such I'll need to get another 360 before my choices are taken away.
thanks.
lazzydragon - Saturday, July 3, 2010 - link
I can't find anything about the scratching of the disks. Both of our xboxes, the original, and the 360 elite, have scratched up a few disks each. We do not turn it on it's side, and we don't move the xbox while it is being played. This usually happens within an hour of playing a new game. (HATE paying over 100$ for one game!!!) I was wondering if this was fixed in the new version. I saw that in the old version, a lot of people had to mod their' own. This is our deciding factor in whether we buy an xbox slim or not. All of our other concerns seem to have been addressed. Thankyou!!!Monica